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Hello folks.

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Hi, I've been working in IT for over 10 years now.

The first few years I spent working for a small local company doing field support work for a very broad range of business clients. Duties included specing, building and onsite installation of systems, as well as installing the odd bit of structured cabling here and there, and of course providing telephone and onsite support to the clients. The job could get very stressful a times, especially if one of your sales guys had landed you in it and sold the client some thing completely inappropiate that won't work with their current gear. There's nothing like being on the sharp end of the stick to bring out a sweat. Lesson learnt there is always ring the client up yourself before you go, and make your own investigations into what their needs and requirments might be. Overall though I quite enjoyed going out on my own to new clients and that buzz of never knowing quite what to expect.

After that and for the last 7 years I've been working for a large corporate company in the newspaper publishing sector doing 1st/2nd line support. Duties there included everything from moving furniture, right up to the basic administration of the various servers, network etc. Essentially it seemed like the attitude was that "if it has a plug on the end of it, then it must be something to do with IT". Although that still didn't stop people from ringing to tell us the toilets were blocked or that the water cooler was empty etc etc....

However 5 weeks ago I was made redundant due to a combination of planned IT changes across the group finally coming into fruition and of course the recent economic downturn. The problem I have now is that although I've 10 years or more experience behind me I don't have any of the official little bits of paper to back any of it up. So my little conundrum is do I hang on to my redundancy money which will hopefully see me through this lean time and hope that I can get another job soon. Or do I invest it in some certified training either through a provider or self taught. The problem with that second option being that I'd be spending my life line and would really need to find work asap if I went that route.

I've been looking at doing one of the advanced web design/developer courses offered by Advent or Computeach etc, as I'd like to get away from the support side of IT now. 10 years of the constant fire fighting and endless problems kind of grinds you down a bit after a while. Plus I orginally studed at art college many years ago, so any chance to combine my creative side with the IT side sounds good to me. So I'm all in a bit of a quandary at the moment over whether to risk it and spend the money on getting certified or hope that I can get more work in the next few months. So any advice would be much appreciated.

Anyway sorry for the long hello post but my life seems to be a ball of confusion at the moment.

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Hi Welcome

Most of the experienced people on this forum (and we are talking people who have years ofexperience) are of the opinion that certs like CIW are useless and the best way to get ahead in web development is to create a portfolio of your designs and use them when selling yourself at an interview.

Are you sure you want to head over to web design? The reason i ask, is you have ten valuble years of experience in the other direction as it were. Perhaps working for the right company may be to your liking.

If you really do want to change, then I would suggest you invest in some good books (advice from web people will follow) and a graphics editor of your choice. I suppose web design is a bit like being a photographer: clients will want to see your work.

I've been looking at doing one of the advanced web design/developer courses offered by Advent or Computeach etc, as I'd like to get away from the support side of IT now. 10 years of the constant fire fighting and endless problems kind of grinds you down a bit after a while. Plus I orginally studed at art college many years ago, so any chance to combine my creative side with the IT side sounds good to me. So I'm all in a bit of a quandary at the moment over whether to risk it and spend the money on getting certified or hope that I can get more work in the next few months. So any advice would be much appreciated.

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Are you sure you want to throw away 10 years support experience? I have worked with some web designers who would put together a great looking website only for the customer to complain about something trivial.

Why not go for some IT support based certs such as A+, Network+, MCDST and even MCSA?

Thanks for the advice folks, as it's pretty much confirmed other advice I've been receiving from some of my other friends in the IT industry. That and I keep hearing that the web design market is over saturated at the moment. Even a sales chap from Computeach told me that, and advised me not to do a web development course.

Which is all just as well, as I wasn't too comfortable with the idea of giving 6k to some training company for, well I don't know what really. 10 days or so of class time and the rest self study, seems rather too expensive to me.

A few other have advised me to go the A+, Network+ route, so I guess I'll start there and keep my money in the bank.

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